Category: Bilder

Joking aside, when your 50/50 French/Norwegian cousin invites you along to the city of cities, you should be prepared (mentally and physically ofc) to see and experience as much as humanly possible, within the given time frame. Oh yeah! 😀

We, the marathon team, can be seen below, eager to begin!

We arrived late at night (from the airport) in the apartment belonging to Johanna’s family, situated right in the middle of ‘everything’! What a luxury! Here is a photo of the backyard:

Early next morning, (or, pretty late if you were to ask the other two, lol), we went out and got ourselves some fresh croissants (and my favourite, pain au chocolat) from a local bakery. Note: Breakfasts doesn’t get any better than this. Really.

Warning #1: Quite a lot of architectural photos were taken on this trip, and consequently, the subset of images shown here, maintains that same proportionality. Sorry?

Warning #2: A new reader of this blog – if such a person exists – might think that we quite recently visited Paris. No, – no no no. This was 2 years ago, which, by the standards of this blog, is quite recent. What I am trying to say is: the level of detail describing the whereabouts of this trip, encompassed in the bank of memories called “my brain” has shrunk somewhat. Fear not, any memory of activities related to “food” and/or “eating” are still vividly alive.

Another thing I distinctly recall is a visit to the Jewish Quarter (Rue des Rosiers, as can be seen on the street sign below). Johanna, our lovely, local tour guide and travel companion, gave us an excellent tour of the area; the narrow streets, the small shops and best of all, the bottom left corner of the collage below:

B-e-a-utiful!

Later that day, or maybe it was the next day. Who knows, maybe this happened previous to the visit to the Jewish Quarter, the point is, I can’t remember lol…

…anyways, we had a nice break from sightseeing on foot by jumping onboard one of the “tourist ferries” going up and down the River Seine (never underestimate the joy of stretching your legs!). From there this view presented itself:

We got to know the Paris Opera (fr: Opéra de Paris), at least from the outside – absolutely beautiful of courrrrse. (Yeah, btw, that’s right – the one below spelling “Academie Nationale de Musique”, haha, quick fun-fact: after looking at its Wikipedia-article, it became clear that this place has changed its name more times than you can count!)

…and again, from afar:

Next morning, clear blue skies with the moon peeking out from behind Notre-Dame (might need to enlarge the image to see it)

We boarded an early train to Versailles to avoid spending hours waiting in line at the entrance. We then went on to spending hours in line at the entrance. Also, on a side note, good thing a whole bus load of tourists didn’t cut in front of us, even getting the guards to side with them. Good thing…yeah

Not much needs to be said about the garden(s) around/behind Versailles – sumptuous! …and large, over 800 hectares (8 km²), filled with sculptures, pathways, fountains and tourists: around 4 million each year come visit.

A hyperlapse-video of a walk around the “Mirror Pool” can be seen below. The video was captured on a phone which unfortunately resulted in it being very shaky – and kind of unwatchable… luckily, modern video software has excellent stabilization filters built-in. For your entertainment – to see just how shaky the video really is, I have left the video uncropped:

We lost track of time in the huge labyrinth-like garden, but still managed to sneak into Versailles right before close. This gave us a completely new view of the palace – suddenly the dense crowds were gone, and all we could see in the mercury mirrors were ourselves. What a stunning view both inside and outside (the palace, that is – well, us too lol)!

Later that day we went to the well-known restaurant, La Coupole, that has served traditional French food since 1927! A walk back in time…

As the sun went down, we strolled through the streets of Paris, enjoying a mild breeze and pleasant summer temperatures.

This one guy also stayed up this night:

Next day – woke up with sun burns 😦 Meh! That’s what you get for staying out all day…

We went to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, a varied park with POIs like a large cave, kilometers of pathways, cherry trees and a temple on top of a cliff – surrounded by a lake. From the summit you can see all the way to Sacré-Cœur:

But Paris has more to offer than just, “pfft Versailles” and its large, lush parks… it has the most interesting waterways leading right into the hearth of the city.

But first, a photo of this smiling guy standing in front of some mildly disturbing graffiti:

Canal Saint-Martin, ordered built by Napoléon himself in 1802, is a fascinating sight with its locks that are still in use. I might even have a timelapse with a retro-twist to show later…

As promised – video!

And now, rain. Lots of it. I loved it, my two companions, not so much… haha

…I mean, I have seen her happier than this:

We ran home, then used the (warm) shower as a means of resuscitation…

That same evening, we went to an intimate concert at Sainte-Chapelle. This was a wonderful experience and something I’d highly recommend if you ever have the opportunity! Saint-Chapelle is in my opinion the prettiest Gothic-style chapel in Paris; simply a must-view:

More evidence of just how picturesque Paris is, ensues:

Marit et moi, vis-à-vis de Notre-Dame:

The picture above, (and below), is from a close-to 5 km long, partly elevated walkway known as Promenade plantée or Coulée verte René-Dumont that was built on a railway that no longer were in use. It starts off at the Bastille.
A birds-eye view of the walkway can be seen here (link to The Guardian) – I even think the apartment building is the same one as above(!).

When in Paris, do stupid stuff in front of the Eiffel tower. This is the law.

I don’t even…

On a more serious note, let’s end this blog post with the most well-known landmark in the world, – and without me. Paris, we love you! …and we will most surely return.

Oh look, more Eiffel tower AND the French flag! Woah! Thought this blog post were finished already??

In the same way part 2 ended, part 3 will begin; fishermen (at display). One in colour, and one silhouette.

Inle Lake is one of the many must-sees of Myanmar; a great lake with magnificent “floating” settlements (on bamboo poles). Beautiful, really.

Small boats are the essential tool for the locals to get around here, as witnessed in the coming pictures.

Our first stop for the day was an open-spaced culture/festival/pseudo-temple place, whose entrance can be seen above. We sat down and our guide taught us about a special festival dish called “sticky rice”, which we also got to taste. Beside us, a drowsy cat enjoyed the warm sunlight that shone down at it through some cracks in the ceiling.

The multi-purpose temple was connected to a small, (but long) market by a tunnel of sorts, which we traversed to get to our transport, waiting on the other side. It made for a cool photo at least.

Here is a picture of our guide and skipper for the day. Being a tour guide seemed to be a a high-status occupation here. She spoke understandable English, which made her stand out from the other guides we had (yeah, lol).

While the houses are on poles, the wide-stretching gardens are certainly not. They float and can carry the weight of roughly a person per 5-10 meters (especially when they are small..). Below, three girls can be seen harvesting (not quite sure what exactly), while chatting and smiling happily.

The roads are obviously water-ways:

Nest stop was the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda, a temple known for its “five small gilded images of Buddha, which have been covered in gold leaf to the point that their original forms cannot be seen“. Popular attraction. NB: males only as witnessed by the sign below! A fun aspect of the Burmese written language, is that it does not need spaces between words.

Time had come to find some food, and we left for Grandma’s Kitchen. Maybe it’s her in the window, – who knows? The only thing we know for sure is that we got severe food poisoning, which kept us in bed the entire next day. Maybe grandma didn’t like us 😛

The final stop for the day was the house where the guide lived. She first showed us the cigarette-making facility next-door, where several older woman (with extraordinary fingerspitzengefühl) cut, filled and rolled cigarettes at an insane pace! Then we got to try out the highly traditional facial make-up. “Now you become pretty, haha”, she told me after painting me with Thanaka. I am not so sure I would call it an improvement though haha..

On our way home, the (morning?) fog were mostly gone and the slightly warmer afternoon light made for new photographic opportunities of the fishermen.

As previously mentioned, the next day came and went without us ever leaving the hotel room out of fear of vomiting and/or something worse. A painful day. Moving on. The next morning, we had plans to explore the area by ourselves, and we started out carefully in the city centre.

Later, we visited a vineyard where we ordered well-cooked food and drank “Aha” and “Power Peace” water. Very watery water. The best water.

That was the last of the images from Inle Lake. The same evening, we travelled by bus down to Yangon; our final city to visit on this trip. It is a large city, and the most “city-like” city we had seen to date in Myanmar.

The first day were spent exploring by foot – and Jørgen got to know a local taxi driver quite well (transcription from video):
– [Jørgen] Do you have a wife?
– [Sjåfør ] Yes
– [Jørgen] What is her name?
– [Sjåfør ] Yes
– [Jørgen ]Do you have a kid?
– [Sjåfør ] Yes
– [Jørgen] What is his name?
– [Sjåfør ] Yes
– [Håkon] Jeg tror ikke du når helt igjennom til ham xD (ENG: I don’t think you quite get through to him xD)

The next day, we were again ready for an excursion – this time to the Golden Rock! On our way there we came across a small village focused solely around (the many ways of) preparing Cobra Head Fish for eating.

To get to the Golden Rock, you get “loaded” on repurposed trucks that can drive “vertically” up the mountain side. This is really, really fun, and an experience you should not leave Myanmar without!

We unfortunately arrived at a time of reconstruction, and so the rock were covered up. Not quite sure why an actual rock would need cosmetic treatment, but hey, we got to drive the trucks!

Another bonus with the trip was the deeply interesting items for sale at the top of the mountain. Like a toy replica of RPG-7. I can almost hear the commercial “…spend some quality time with your kid, with this ultra-realistic rocket-propelled grenade launcher!!”.

We stayed the night in a bungalow near the foot of the mountain. The next morning, we got to see how rubber is made from a sticky white liquid that is harvested from trees. Then we drove off to get a fresh watermelon before entering some of the largest pagodas in the country.

Because we like trains just as much as Sheldon, we decided to try out the Burmese railways on our way back. That was a slow, but bumpy ride I can tell you. Glorious!

In the evening we celebrated (and mourned) that the epic journey was coming to an end. The next day consisted mainly of transportation, so I leave you with one last image from a book store in Yangon – try to spot the easter egg!

We had one day in Bangkok before departing separate ways. The most memorable image from this day is this mugshot taken at an escape-room establishment.

….and this, this is a hotel. Not our hotel, but the hotel: Sky Bar at Lebua, State Tower (maybe known to some from Hangover 2).

Martin & Jørgen, – thanks for a great journey; exploration of unknown territory (*cough*) with many intense moments, sunsets and stomach pain. Where to next??

We rented bikes the following morning, and went out at the crack of dawn.

After the marked, we headed out of the inner city and cruised by at least 5-10 (plus/minus 50) temples. (We even set foot in some of them – surprise, surprise!). Soon, we departed from our luxurious asphalt and let a dirt road show us the way to the countryside and the people living out their (calm?) lives there.

As always (well, maybe), I asked for her permission to take a shot. She looked up, tilted her head to the side and it was clear she did not understand why on earth I would approach her, let alone talk to her while she did the laundry. So I pointed at my camera, we exchanged a smile and I called it an agreement.

This little boy lived right across the slow-paced river and I guess he tried to figure out what we all where doing there. I cracked a smile, he didn’t, we left. Notice to self: I have to stop smiling awkwardly to everyone we meet. However, Jørgen clearly knows more than me about how to get people to smile back at him. To support this claim, I have a ton of evidence, like this one (and the next):

All in all, we biked for nearly 20 kilometres that day. That called for taking the rest of the day off (you know, having a mini-vacation while busy “vacation-ing”). To accommodate this need, we found a splendid restaurant with a fantastic view of the river Irrawaddy. As the sun set, the sky went through a broad spectrum of warm colors, – and we, a broad spectrum of food. Delicious food.

From Mandalay, we went south to Bagan by bus. The driver was, to put it mildly, an aggressive man when it came to honking, overtaking – AND – honking while overtaking (and, I kid you not, overtaking while honking). More times than I could count, vehicles in the opposite lane had to come to a complete stop because WE SURE AS HELL WASN’T GOING TO! His horn conveyed an important message, I’M BIGGER THAN YOU; HERE I COME, AND – THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Jeez. BEEEP-de-BAAP-dii-BOOOP. No sleep for you, mister.

Our hotel was really nice, situated close to “Old Bagan”. It was not the first (nor the last) to proclaim free wifi access. However, as it turned out, the router, was not in any way connected to the internet (as a rule of thumb, this is always the case in Myanmar). A-okey though; we weren’t there to browse the web, but to explore, climb and wander through the semi-dessert, which was filled-to-the-brim with temples of all sizes.

With (the superbly manly) means of transportation – an electrical scooter (that maxed out at 15-20 km/h), we tumbled into the wilderness head first. Among the many (monstrously) dangerous challenges we faced, perhaps Jørgen getting his front wheel stuck, spinning erratic in the sand, stood out as the most perilous. Or maybe when his battery pack started to decay… and we barely made it out alive… (#Picturesbelowunrelated #notreally)

We came across a vantage point, a tower (kinda easy to spot). After 2000 steps or so, (just kidding, elevator #privilege) we experienced an amazing view. As can be seen in numerous pictures below, the landscape was mesmerizing, especially the way it slowly faded into the all-surrounding white haze.

We found some 10-20 Buddhist monks sleeping / relaxing at the top of the tower, in the shade. They found us interesting to look at, but not quite interesting enough to talk to 😛

Temples are excellent places to take a nap during the hottest part of the day. The 1-4 meter thick stone walls makes it nice and cool inside.

After 3 days in Bagan, we returned to the road with destination Inle Lake. Time estimate: ~9-10 hours. It took 8 hours. How? They had calculated an average of at least one tire change. Real analysis folks.

The mandatory suicide of one of the tires – to keep us on schedule – happened in the middle of absolutely nowhere. However, we had no problem with taking a break from the bus, and went out for a short stroll to stretch our legs and more importantly, empty our fluid containers.

3 Burmese men, patiently waiting:

The next morning, we had a date with the at-most-3-meters-deep Inle Lake, a nice wooden boat – and a lovely, yet way to fancy dressed tour guide. She had by far the best English accent to date.

The morning mist made the first few hours on the lake magical. The water seemed to continue on and on, infinitely far in all directions. The two images below bring back some of that floaty feeling for me. Ah, what is better than a state-funded, culture-preserving fisherman-actor, showing off “the old ways” to the tourists, so that you, i.e. me, can snap a picture of him and his ancient, ineffective fish catching technique? Absolutely love it!

I’ll give you 5 seconds to answer: What is the very first thing that comes to mind when you think about Myanmar? Let me guess – Aung San Suu Kyi, right? At least for me it was. When I got around to think about what I actually knew about this nation before travelling there, “not much” sums it up, I’m afraid..

Now, let’s take this from the beginning. My two childhood friends, Jørgen & Martin has got two parents (as one commonly does) with a slight taste (read: huge appetite) for the Pacific Ocean and all of its remote, tropical islands. So, last winter they left Oslo to spend a couple of months in paradise (look up Rarotonga – no, not on a physical map, …yes, use Google image search, … and yes, that is actually the place, …no, that is not photoshopped (you get the point now, I figure)). Accompanied in part by their children; these two young boys wanted to do a sweep across Asia, before returning home. A part of that exciting quest was exploration of Myanmar. I was invited along – and gladly accepted!

Flight DY7205 from Oslo through Stockholm to Bangkok. Appropriately named “BANG-kok!”, a complete opposite to “The sound of Silence”. However, it felt strangely familiar, having been to some of the great, busy cities of India. A picture of traffic in two-three elevated “channels” feels appropriate:

Flying to and from Myanmar is restricted to some chosen destinations, and for that reason, we used Thailand as a springboard to its neighbour in the west.

Here’s a portrait of Martin before we move on!

We spent two days exploring, and amongst other things, joined in on a trip into the backwaters of the city; a web of interconnected canals – with “swarming” wildlife… at least a couple of laid-back lizards or two… (pictures to come!).

I’d like to call the next picture “The river captain, and his wife”. Strangely, he is not the one doing the dishes at this one instance in time.

There are no longer predators around that hunt the water monitors. Thus, with a steady supply of food available around-the-clock, they have become lazy and “fearless” of humans, and human activities. We could almost touch it, – that’s how close we could come.

According to our guide, a lot of the traditional way of “slow(-er)” living is vanishing at an accelerating rate. This can perhaps be seen by the brand new buildings that are mixed in with the old canal-side houses.

One thing you don’t escape (in Asia in general), are temples. Literally everywhere, and with an astonishing amount of gold and glitter. However, the golden tan doesn’t come naturally, someone has to paint them shiny…

Back to the backwaters again!

…where we found an orchid farm:

…and an insane amount of fish (carp, I think), that was used to being fed white bread lol. When we started to feed them, the water literally turned into fish. H-Fish-O2. The battle was ON!

Back in the city, this stray dog caught my attention between two parked, colourful buses.

The air quality is plain awful, no surprise here. The drivers try to be cautious, and most use a facial mask.

The next day, we swapped out Bangkok with Mandalay. It’s situated on the banks of Irrawaddy, in the heart of Myanmar. (This is a good time to hit play on Hans Zimmer’s masterpiece “Waters of Irrawaddy”, to really set the mood!). We got a small bungalow all to ourselves, – left our belongings there, and went outside. Our first impression of the people of Myanmar was that they were very friendly, polite – and by no means accustomed to tourists. This is of course a big plus, as it means not getting ripped off in taxis, restaurants and most stores.

Jørgen and Martin posing in front of our accommodation. Award for being the easiest to recognise person, goes to Jørgen, for his exemplary orange shirt.

The first image of this blogpost, was taken just outside our hotel at night time. Same night, some sort of festival were held in the streets, with loads of exotic food and fun activities, mostly for children.

We got in touch with some locals – or more correctly, Jørgen spotted a guitar. They were nice, and we sang along. No english though. But guitar. Fun!

We rented bikes the following morning, and went out at the crack of dawn. First stop was the local marked, were we got to try out a few tasty sweets and meet some of the people that worked there; which to our surprise was (almost) women only! Here are some of them:

I leave you with the following image from the marked entrance, which I really like – may even go as far and say that I think it’s the best picture of this blogpost! Until next time (part 2), cheerio!

Alexander, Sverre, Gergo, Hannah and I decided to pay Chicago a visit some weeks ago. We borrowed a car and bought doughnuts & coffee for the road trip! The drive was 3-4 hours and certainly different from what I’m used to in boring AF Scandinavia. Large billboards literally follow you the entire way; half of them tell you to put your faith in God and the rest appeals to the hungry traveller. Somehow the best steak in the state is always located at the next food exit. Yes, food exit, that is what (some of) the highway exits are called.. lulz.. The typical food exit consists of a cluster of different fast-food chains and the like. A spot on the map of extreme caloric density with an event horizon i.e. the point of no return, where/when you spot that juicy, delicious burger on a billboard.. lolol, here’s a picture of us (three backseat physicists):

The designated driver for the occasion was Alex, given that flat terrain is one of his Danish specialities lololol. Sverre and his phone can be seen also to the right, making sure we are on the right track. #NeverTrustAWindowsPhoneEverAgainLOL

For those of you wondering how far – or perhaps, where the third most populous city in U.S. is situated, here, have a look at the map:

The nickname “The Windy City” is certainly a good fit, for a lot of reasons, mainly – its so damned windy. Luckily for us, the temperature was also freezing! The place we stayed at was somewhat cheap, but more importantly, right in the hearth of Gotham, I mean the metropolis.

After arriving quite late, we decided to grab a beer – and if it hadn’t been for mr. Treider here, almost ruining it by “oh man we gotta go check this out” and “must.. photograph… over… there..” we would have had more than 14 seconds to pick a “flavour”. It turned out the store was “right around the corner” all along. However, neither me nor Alex will acknowledge that someone went around the entire block. Because, that would be… absurd.

Due to the coffee (singular), I couldn’t sleep all night. So, next morning I decided to step up my game, and get that caffeine tolerance up up UP. This has proven more difficult than imagined.

After breakfast, we went out to find Cloud Gate, i.e. The Bean the perhaps most well known tourist attraction in the city(?) – at least the most photographed one. It is best described as a mirror, bent in three dimensions to look like a bean, hence the nickname. We first had to walk there – and here are some shots taken on the way:

As you probably noticed earlier; Chicago is located by Lake Michigan, down south. The fresh water has a special green/turquoise tint to it.

The city is also known for the excellent Field Museum, the home of SUE; the largest, best-preserved, and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. That’s “her” below:

I also found these absolutely hysterical statuettes, which I decided to caption appropriately (you must know your internetz):

We continued our expedition towards the planetarium. (Don’t mind the pointing, it’s the complete opposite direction)

We found it (and decided to come back later) along with a gorgeous view of the city skyline and the lake. We also found our dark caped guardian – not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need. *Sigh*, I need to stop with these quotes.

Me, appreciating a little sun for a change:

After having some food, we joined Alex in his quest of finding Saint Mary of the Angels. If you got he reference of him holding a doughnut and a cup of coffee in front of SUE, you probably get this one too (I most certainly don’t lol). Since we live in 2016, finding the church took about 1.5 seconds + whatever time it took to google it. We grabbed an über and arrived shortly after.

Signs. Weird ones. Blue ones. Chicago hosts a diverse collection… Remember to keep a ruler in your car so that you can check if parking is legal or not during winter times. Will there be more snow? Will the magical 2 inches be reached? Playing with fire, are we? Or how about a 500 dollar fine for feeding the pigeons?

Pizza, delicious and fat. One metric tonne of cheese. Very yummy, much taste, such wow. Sverre looks ecstatic at the sheer sight of food after a long day (as we all were, of course).

I wanted to go back to the pier for a long exposure shot of the city in the dark, over the water. Somehow I managed to convince the others to accompany me! Safe to say, we were not alone out there. There were a certain very recognizable smell in the air.

This blog post would be incomplete without a photo of the famous Chicago “L” (short for elevated) that transports people into, around and out of the city.

…and here is a cute little turtle from Shedd Aquarium:

To this day, I don’t know why it says “A BEST”. GAWD, IT MAKES NO SENSE. Anyway, this is the entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago. A place definitely worth a visit.

This exhibition appealed to me of course! /physicslessonstart/ What we’ve got here is the classic potato battery, taken to the extreme. After some googling, I found out that you can get a little over 1 V per potato. A rough estimate of 500 potatoes gives us something like 500 V to play around with. Wait. Am I sure that they are all connected in series? Nope. Could you do anything fun with it? Not really, the current is probably too low bad. Is it still awesome? YES! /physicslessonend/

Also, we got this intensely interesting triple-square thingy going on. If that doesn’t get your hearth pumping, I don’t know what will.

The last great adventure was climbing up the 92-or-so floors of the John Hancock Center. There we got to try out Tilt, which is best described with some photos. This evening was the night of the Super Bowl, so we had the entire floor to ourselves; 360 degree of pure panoramic view. What followed was quite a spectacular sunset, I must say.

Here is a timelapse from my phone of the sunset. Due to “bad” auto-exposure there is some flickering… Anyways.

Then, after some food from a great kind-of-market-place-but-not-really, we found the car and started driving home. Since Chicago/Illinois is an hour behind Michigan, we got back a little later than anticipated. But, who cares? Awesome trip!

Late October ’14. I picked up Jørgen at Bø in Telemark. It was late afternoon, and the sun was about to set. We had a very specific mission in mind, we were going to Denmark – by car. This of course, meant we had to cross the famous Øresund Bridge – and boy were we excited about that. Jeez.

First obstacle in our path, – waiting in line for the ferry that was going to carry us from Horten to Moss. The wind was chilly, but the sea (or should I say fjord?) was calm. Looking towards land on the other side, calm seems to be a good description there as well.

Well ashore, we once again turned to the road. At some point we noticed the astounding amount of windmills along the unlit highway. We deduced from this, without a shadow of doubt, that we had crossed into Sweden. The rain started pouring down like crazy, but we were to busy singing along to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On the Dancefloor to notice. (The video proof of this will be destroyed, rest assured. EDIT: Hmm.. at second thought, I’m gonna save that for your wedding Jørgen #trollface #swag #HaddeIkkeKommetSærligLangtIIdolNei)

We drove past Gothenburg (Göteborg) and continued (on the now very familiar) European route E6. The trip meter was closing in on the 50 kilometer mark, meanwhile Sweden prepared for dawn. We however, did not feel the urge to stop. Until now. We spent the night in a (not so) small hotel in Falkenberg, watching over Tullbron. That’s a bridge, that is. This bridge:

Please don’t think of us as bridge fanatics or any of the sort. They are just that…. pretty… mmhm..

Moving on. For once, there is actually gonna be a picture of me featured right here on the blog. Thanks to Jørgen! I think I’m singing along to Spice Girls. #WouldHaveBeenKickedOutOfIdolEvenBeforeItStarted.

And then, all of a sudden, Øresund Bridge. Magnificent, monumental and majestic. We left Malmø under perfect photographic conditions. My best shot from the trip, coming up: (#LikeOrGTFO)

24 hours after start, we had crossed into Denmark. The speed limit was now raised for the second (felt as the “third”) time. First to 120 km/h in Sweden, and now 130 km/h. Why “third” you say, well, the Norwegian Government had announced earlier that same year (in May) to raise the maximum speed limit from 100 km/h to 110 km/h on some specific (ridiculously well built) highways.

Just a note, depending on the display you are watching these images on, they might appear very dark. That is mostly likely because the images are very dark lol #ThankYouVeryMuchVeryHelpful

BUT!!! What did you do in Denmark? ..you may rightfully ask. Well, that’s a story for another…. wedding. Here have a cooki… I mean sunset

In the very unlikely case that you, the reader, are in fact not Norwegian, consider this your lucky day! I’ve decided to write this in English, just for good exercise!

The first few days here at Michigan State University (from now on, MSU) are coming to an end, – and what an eventful week it has been! It all started with me actually getting my VISA back from the embassy in less than 24 hours (rather than the specified 10 days, thanks to a lovely lady (case worker) at the consulate). I packed my bags, slept perhaps an hour or two before rushing to the airport, way to early. Dropped off my bag and went straight through security in a matter of minutes. When arriving gate 50, at the end of the hall, I had roughly 2 and a half hour before departure. Yeah. Well planned and all that. The sun was slowly rising and with nothing better to do, I tried to get a somewhat good picture of it.

I put on my headset, turned the volume up quite a bit and set the alarm to go off some 90 minutes later. ZzzZZzzZZz. Finally boarding! Kygo was there! Kept staring like a starstruck moron. Walked onboard, found my seat and was in a good mood thanks to, among other things, an empty seat right next to me! Yey! Over the speakers we got notified of a 30 minute delay, so we started waiting. Little did we know…

…and waiting… and waiting. You get the point. Flight cancelled. Back off the plane, get the luggage back, try again tomorrow. Orientation weekend in Michigan, out the window unfortunately.

New day & better luck. First a short flight to Arlanda, (Sweden) before flying back over Norway, and then crossing the Atlantic. Couple of hours waiting in New York. Got through U.S. Customs and Border Protection smoothly!
The bag tag printed by SAS was actually headed towards New Orléans, but thankfully I was made aware of this by the individual scanning my bag. I got a new tag and managed to get it with me all the way to Detroit. At that moment, not a lot of happy thoughts about SAS went through my head.

The weather was foggy, or perhaps misty is more correct. I had some time to kill before my bus to the university was leaving, so I sat down at a local bar and asked for a Coca Cola Light. That did not go exactly as planned… I forced down a god-awful Corona Light and said good-bye, ashamed. DIET COKE GOD DAMMIT! Lesson most definitely, learned.

When I finally arrived at MSU, I was met by my awesome Norwegian prof. Morten Hjorth-Jensen (the mastermind behind the exchange agreement where I don’t have to pay 10400 USD in tuition…) and a couple of Ambassadors from the university (also awesome!). I got safely escorted to Owen Hall, all the way to the door, 323, where I moments later fell asleep.

The following morning (middle of the day actually) I woke up to a quiet and slightly foggy university. I can honestly say that I’ve had no problems whatsoever with jet lag. Easy. 6°C was something completely different from the -18°C back home. Oh boy, little did I know…

The semester didn’t really begin before Monday, so the campus was awfully quiet. Not a soul to be seen anywhere, except for the occasional oversized squirrel. The Ambassadors helped me get the necessary supplies to survive here.

And if you wondered what my dormitory looks like, here’s a photo of the hallway at least:

I was invited out for dinner – burger & local beer of course – by Morten, which was precisely the kind of food I craved, and precisely as good as one could possibly hope for! Not to make you jealous, but, yeah, the food here is nothing short of amazing, – just beware of the portion sizes (or you’ll quickly end up in some trouble…). Asking for a miniscule amount, tends to be just about perfect, in the cafeterias all around campus.

And by the way, don’t expect to find the tap for water at your first try. However, vividly blue Powerade or any other flavour of soft drink, not a problem.

The weather changed overnight and suddenly I found myself in very familiar surroundings, – the kind of weather one usually (only) experiences when going skiing in the mountains of Norway (and you are so unlucky as to have no shelter from the wind). The kind of cold that will freeze you, balls to bones in a matter of minutes, if not extreme measures are taken. (Btw, can you spot the Matrix-quote?)

The Red Cedar river splits the campus in half. As can be seen here, it started to freeze right after the temperature dropped.

The campus is situated in the small Midwestern town called East Lansing. The closest city is Detroit, while Chicago isn’t that far away either.